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Monday, July 18, 2016

Review: The Invoice by Jonas Karlsson

Hilarious, profound, and achingly true-to-life, Jonas Karlsson’s novel explores the true nature of happiness through the eyes of hero you won’t soon forgetA passionate film buff, our hero’s life revolves around his part-time job at a video store, the company of a few precious friends, and a daily routine that more often than not concludes with pizza and movie in his treasured small space in Stockholm. When he receives an astronomical invoice from a random national bureaucratic agency, everything will tumble into madness as he calls the hotline night and day to find out why he is the recipient of the largest bill in the entire country.What is the price of a cherished memory? How much would you pay for a beautiful summer day? How will our carefree idealist, who is content with so little and has no chance of paying it back, find a way out of this mess? All these questions pull you through The Invoice and prove once again that Jonas Karlsson is simply a master of entertaining, intelligent, and life-affirming work.

My Review:

When the GR description calls a book hilarious, I expect some big time laughs! Sadly, that was not the case here. This was wry and sarcastic about the world in general but, for me, it wasn't laugh out loud funny. Also, I should point out that this is novella length -- super short and probably should have been labelled as a novella or even a short story. There isn't a lot of development -- we are essentially supposed to accept the invoice -- that all of us must pay to breathe the air, to live -- basically and the book instead focuses on how they calculated the figure for each person; happiness = higher invoice. I would probably skip this one -- it was an interesting premise but there wasn't much more to it.

The Invoice came out last week on July 12, 2016, and you can purchase HERE.

I looked at all the familiar things in my life. The buildings, streets, trees. The ice-cream kiosk and shops. The lunchtime crows in restaurants. The posters on the walls and the newspaper flysheets. My fingers toyed with the note in my pocket. Of all the people around me, only I knew that I was probably the happiest person in the country. And at absolutely no cost. I took a deep breath of the mild summer air. It occurred to me that I could have some ice cream. Mint chocolate and raspberry, my two favorites.

10 comments:

I'm sorry this wasn't as funny as you expected it to be, Eva. That's really disappointing. I don't think this was even for me in the first place, but I definitely won't be picking it up now or reccing it to anyone I know.

Don't you hate when a book description is totally different from what it said?, It's like, WHY YOU MAKE ME WANT TO READ YOU AND THEN DISAPPOINT ME? DO YOU JUST WANT TO BREAK MY HEART? I Don't get it.... Sorry you didn't really care for this one girl and I hope your next one is way, wayyyy better. ♡♡

Don't you hate when a book description is totally different from what it said?, It's like, WHY YOU MAKE ME WANT TO READ YOU AND THEN DISAPPOINT ME? DO YOU JUST WANT TO BREAK MY HEART? I Don't get it.... Sorry you didn't really care for this one girl and I hope your next one is way, wayyyy better. ♡♡

I've come to realize that the blurb writers' definitions of hilarious and my own definition are never the same. I've accepted wry humor as the norm. I miss the days of when hilarious meant a Stephanie Plum type of laugh. I wish it had at least been longer for you. Of course, that might have prolonged the agony.

Oh nooooo!!! I always get super excited when I'm told a book is funny too, so it sounds like this one would have let me down too. Sorry you didn't enjoy it more. :( Great review! I hope your next read is more enjoyable!